Somewhere between the whir of teenage activity and confinement of the rocking chair, we find a strange creature called a missionary!

Missionaries come in assorted varieties of Elders and Sister missionaries. They come in different sizes, weights and colors; green being the most common.

Missionaries are found everywhere: in a hurry, climbing stairs, knocking on, breaking through, preaching to, and getting thrown out of.

Converts love them, young girls worship them (the Elder type) dogs hate them, the law tolerates them, most people ignore them, and heaven protects them.

A missionary is truth with a pocket full of tracts, wisdom with a scant knowledge of the Bible, faith with 50R in its pocket and two weeks before the next check comes.

A missionary is a composite ... It has the appetite of a horse, the enthusiasm of a fire cracker, the patience of Job, the persistence of a Hoover salesman, and the courage of a lion tamer.

It likes letters from home, invitations to Sunday dinner, conferences, checks, testimony meetings, companions, baptisms, and visits from the Mission President.

It doesn't go much on tracting in the rain, ladies who slam doors, hats, blocks of flats, transfers, shaking hands at arms length, alarm clocks, and last but not least, letters that start with "Dear John."

Nobody rises so early, or is so tired by 10:30PM. Nobody else can knock so boldly with a shaky hand. Nobody else can get such a thrill at the end of a disappointing day when someone says, "Won't you come in, we have been waiting for you."

Yes, a missionary is an odd character. It can get homesick, and temporarily lose faith in the human race, but a strange lump rises in its throat the day it receives its letter of release, and on arrival home, its return talk will probably contain the phrase once considered trite,

"The time I spent as a missionary was the happiest time of my life."

(Author Unknown)